TOKYO (Reuters) -Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan’s biggest brokerage and investment bank, reported an 11% rise in quarterly net profit on Wednesday, as a partial stake sale in an affiliate lifted otherwise weak earnings.
Profit came in at 66.9 billion yen ($513.51 million) for the October-December period, up from 60.3 billion yen a year earlier.
Nomura’s profit of 28 billion yen from a partial sale of its stake in affiliate Nomura Research Institute helped underpinned the earnings.
The wholesale division, which houses its trading and investment banking businesses, reported a pretax loss of 1.9 billion yen, compared with a profit of 40.8 billion yen in the same period a year earlier.
The dismal results from Nomura come as a plunge in investment banking has led to deep job cuts at Wall Street dealmakers, with Goldman Sachs letting go of more than 3,000 employees in its biggest round of job cuts since the 2008 financial crisis.
So far, Nomura appears relatively unscathed thanks to relatively solid dealmaking activity in Japan, Nomura’s home market. Reuters last month reported it has cut 18 Asian banking jobs, most of them China-focused investment roles.
($1 = 130.2800 yen)
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Subhranshu Sahu)
